Jake Tapper Takes Exception to My Interpretation

Nov 16, 2012

RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, yesterday on this program — darn it, darn it, darn it. Cookie, could you find the sound bite from Jake Tapper that I aired yesterday? Because we aired the sound bite, and I analyzed it, and Jake went to Twitter and said that I was misrepresenting what he had said. I do not purposely misrepresent or lie. I don’t see any value in it. I’m not a politician that wants to get somewhere by lying. I’m not gonna have any credibility if everybody thinks all I’m doing is lying about stuff. That was not my intention. I don’t want to be wrong. And Jake says I was misinterpreting what he said. So I want to get the sound bite and play it and I’ll revisit my interpretation.

But he sent my brother a couple of tweets and he sent an e-mail to H.R., trusted, loyal chief of staff, and said a lot of people were being unfair and calling him an Obamaite or some such thing, but that my interpretation was wrong. He allowed with H.R. that he might not have been clear in his comments but he felt bad because he was hearing from a lot of you accusing him of being an Obamaite because of what I said, and he doesn’t want to be thought of as an Obamaite. Okay, so here’s the sound bite. Here’s the sound bite. I don’t have the transcript in front of me now, doesn’t matter. I think it was on CNN, Piers Morgan, and I think the question was why didn’t the mainstream media cover Benghazi. I think that’s pretty much what it was. Let’s listen.

TAPPER: As somebody who was covering the Benghazi story in the months leading up to the election, it was so politicized with the White House and the administration and the defensive crouch because they thought every word they said would be twisted and unfairly attacked and they didn’t obviously want to interfere with a positive narrative about Al-Qaeda, and Republicans putting out conspiracy theories, some of them not rooted in any facts or evidence, that it was tough to report on this.

RUSH: Okay. Now, the way I interpreted that was, remember who Jake is, he’s a White House reporter for ABC, and he’s explaining why the Benghazi story was not interesting, why there was no news there, or why it wasn’t covered. On the one hand, you had the administration, and they didn’t want their positive narrative about Al-Qaeda being on the run, ’cause that’s what the narrative was.

Now, Jake doesn’t say that. See, I’m assuming. The White House narrative on Al-Qaeda was that Obama had ’em on the run. That’s been the thing since the convention, since they got Osama Bin Laden. In fact, the president was saying it on the campaign trail. And Jake admits that the White House didn’t want that narrative messed with, and they were very defensive about this.

On the other side was the Republicans believing in a bunch of conspiracy theories that you couldn’t believe in that weren’t based in fact, so my interpretation was that since the White House didn’t want their narrative tampered with and the Republicans didn’t have one you could believe in, that there wasn’t a story because who knew what really happened.

Now, my critical interpretation of this was based on the fact of my understanding of journalism. My understanding of journalism is that it’s not the role of any journalist to be concerned with carrying forward any politician’s narrative, be it the White House or the Republicans. My admittedly old-fashioned interpretation of journalists is that they don’t trust anybody; that they especially are suspicious of people with a lot of power; that they will speak truth to power; that their objective here is to make sure that people with power don’t run roughshod over everybody.

And what I heard him say here was he wanted to respect the White House narrative, which was a positive Al-Qaeda narrative, that they’re on the run. Okay, we are sitting out here realizing, no, Al-Qaeda is not on the run. They did the attack. That was not a conspiracy theory. It was not a game. It was not a made up non-fact. It has been admitted to, and it was admitted to before the election by the State Department, by any number of government agencies.

So the White House narrative was wrong. But, see, I interpreted Jacob Tapper as not caring whether the White House narrative was wrong. What he was concerned about was not displeasing them. That’s what I heard him say, and so that’s essentially what I said yesterday, which resulted in a number of you tweeting him being critical of his comment there as I was. So he let us know that he didn’t like it. He was unhappy with the response that my interpretation of his comment was creating, but I just want to specify again here that I can understand Jay Carney, the regime’s flack, protecting the narrative. But I thought that Peter Jennings, Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, Chuck Todd, Brian Williams, I thought these guys were to instinctively not trust it, particularly when there was news out there that Al-Qaeda’s not on the run, they’re building up, that they did the attack.

So, anyway, Jacob also has a book. It’s called The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor. It explores the lives of troops, brave troops and their families, who toiled at a very vulnerable remote outpost 14 miles from the Pakistan border. That’s why he’s doing media appearances because he’s written a book and it’s apparently very supportive of these brave troops and their families.

(interruption)

Snerdley is asking me, “Well, what is the right interpretation?” Let’s play it again. I’ll take a stab at the correct interpretation. My interpretation is what it is. And, again, my interpretation is rooted in what apparently is a misunderstanding of journalism, or journalists today. And, by the way, it’s very helpful for me to learn this.

Dana Bash and some others talking about McCain and Graham demanding a select committee to look into Benghazi, and Chuck Todd expressed sadness that they hijacked Obama’s first press conference. He was in a great mood. He was gonna be cooperative. These guys come along and demand a select committee on Benghazi, and it made Obama mad, and it was unfortunate. So I didn’t know that journalists chose sides.

But, remember, it was some Democrat senator who said, “I can’t wait for this. Too old white guys attacking a black woman,” Susan Rice. Well, clearly that’s not what’s happening here. There are people trying to get to the bottom what happened in Benghazi. We didn’t make her UN ambassador; Obama did. It’s not our fault or anybody else’s fault that she’s black, but is she immune from criticism because she’s African-American? And I guess the answer is yes. But that’s another thing. Here’s Jake’s CNN comment, Piers Morgan from two nights ago, again.

TAPPER: As somebody who was covering the Benghazi story in the months leading up to the election, it was so politicized with the White House and the administration and the defensive crouch because they thought every word they said would be twisted and unfairly attacked and they didn’t obviously want to interfere with a positive narrative about Al-Qaeda, and Republicans putting out conspiracy theories, some of them not rooted in any facts or evidence, that it was tough to report on this.

RUSH: Okay. So I guess the interpretation he wants is, here’s an actual attack that killed four Americans and it’s been so politicized that it’s impossible to cover. And let’s step back, it’s impossible to cover because it’s been so politicized. If that’s the correct interpretation, what isn’t? My God, the media has publicized every event in the campaign. How will this look for Obama? Will it hurt or help Obama’s reelection. Not there are four dead Americans. I still don’t know what conspiracy theories the Republicans were talking about are. Do you?

No, seriously. Seriously. Oh, oh, that’s right, there were two theories. One was the ambassador intended to get kidnapped in exchange for the blind sheik and the other one he was running guns to Syria. Okay, there were two wild theories, but those were fringe. Those were not the fundamental things that Republicans were saying. No, they weren’t. They were not offered up by elected officials. Offered up by kooks, who knows? The Republican position on this was it was not a video; it was an Al-Qaeda attack and four Americans are dead. That’s not kook fringe. Anyway, Jake’s book is The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor.